Answering the recurring question of why the Jews didn’t leave Germany in time
[NOTE: This is a reposting of an old piece of mine that I think could use another go-round. The reason is that I often see people reference the idea that the Jews of Germany ignored or rationalized or denied or excused what was happening in Germany during the 1930s, and didn’t sound the alarm and leave in time. I see that a number of people are espousing this idea today, this time in the open thread.
The idea is usually brought up here and elsewhere by different people to illustrate various points about Jews, such as for example a notion that they were/are smart but stupid or complacent or naive. But in fact for the most part the idea that the Jews didn’t leave Germany simply isn’t true. I’d like to try to clear that up once again.
I’ve also written or taken voluminous notes for drafts on clearing up other misconceptions about WWII and the Jews – for example, that the Jews went meekly “like lambs to the slaughter” and never resisted when in fact they might have or could have. Another topic for another time. So what follows is the original post, slightly edited.]
It occurs to me from a recent exchange in the comments section that it might be a good idea to visit the topic of the reaction of the Jews of Germany to Hitler.
First I’d like to clear up one thing: the question of what percentage of the German population was Jewish back then. I wrote a post about the topic in September of 2005. Here’s an except:
…[I]n the course of doing some research on World War II and the Holocaust, I came across a statistic that absolutely stunned me: the percentage of Jews in the population of Germany prior to World War II and Hitler’s rise.
Since then, every so often I will ask people if they can guess what it might have been, and no one’s ever gotten it right off the top of their heads, or even come close.
So, what percentage of the population of pre-WWII Germany do you suppose was Jewish? Take a moment and think about it. Then guess.
You can do that now.
Here’s the answer, and it will almost undoubtedly surprise you (unless, of course, you were reading this blog years ago and remember that previous post):
According to the census of June 1933, the Jewish population of Germany consisted of about 500,000 people. Jews represented less than one percent of the total German population of about 67 million people.
Now that we’ve got that cleared up, let’s go to the larger topic: did the great majority of these Jews naively and hopefully fail to see the Nazi menace, and did they stay in Germany too long?
The answer to that is: no. Actually, the majority of them left rather than wait it out. And many who waited it out did so because they could not leave—either because they were old and ill, and/or poor, and/or because all avenues of escape were closed to them.
Here are the statistics:
Increasing antisemitism prompted a wave of a Jewish mass emigration from Germany throughout the 1930s. Soon after their rise to power in 1933, the Nazis negotiated the Haavara Agreement between Zionist authorities in Palestine, which was signed on August 25, 1933. Under its terms, 60,000 German Jews were allowed to emigrate to Palestine and take $100 million in assets with them. Between 1929 and 1939, a total of 250,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, mostly from Germany. Of these, 174,000 arrived between 1933 and 1936. After that, the British Mandatory authorities imposed limits on Jewish immigration, which led to clandestine illegal immigration. This wave of immigration was part of the Fifth Aliyah, and saw many Jewish doctors, lawyers, professionals, and professors leave the country.
The United States was another destination for German Jews seeking to leave the country, though the number allowed to immigrate was restricted due to the Immigration Act of 1924. Between 1933 and 1939, more than 300,000 Germans, some 90% of them Jews, applied for immigration visas to the United States. By 1940, only 90,000 German Jews had been granted visas and allowed to settle in the United States…
Overall, of the 522,000 Jews living in Germany in January 1933, only 214,000 were left by the eve of World War II.
It was probably easier to leave earlier in the 1930s as opposed to later. But from the above numbers you can see that a lot of people were trying—and even succeeding—during the mid-30s. For example, by my calculations, one-third of the entire German Jewish population managed to get to Palestine by 1936, before things tightened up and it became much more difficult to emigrate there (but even before that, numbers were limited by law).
What’s more, some who did leave Germany early on got trapped in their supposed places of refuge as time went on:
Some 100,000 German Jews also moved to Western European countries, especially France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. However, these countries would later be occupied by Germany, and many of them would still fall victim to the Holocaust.
That’s what happened, just to take one example, to Anne Frank’s family, who had emigrated to Amsterdam from Germany when Anne was four. They were trapped there because of Hitler’s sudden invasion of The Netherlands in May of 1940 despite its neutrality till then – an invasion which led to Dutch surrender only five days later, after which escape for people like the Franks was blocked.
But even during the 1930s, in most cases emigration required more than the desire to emigrate. It usually required cunning, connections, and money, and even then it often failed due to the inability to get permission from any country to enter legally because few countries wanted the Jews.
The German Jews were generally more well-off and assimilated than Jews in countries where the Jewish population was much larger, such as Poland. I’ve talked mostly about Germany so far, but as is evident from the statistics, the Jews of Germany constituted a very small minority compared to the other Jews in Europe. However, German Jews were more directly affected early on by Hitler and the Nazis and their restrictive laws. In other parts of Europe, the Jews would have been alerted to the dangers only later. But they were subject to all the restrictions mentioned, and it’s actually quite amazing that many made it out at all.
For every person who managed to leave Germany, it is almost certain that there were many others all over Europe who tried very hard to leave their respective countries and yet failed. Some who remained committed suicide, including in Germany, as chronicled by a German Jewish diarist who lived through the war in Germany (Victor Klemperer), in part because he was married to a non-Jew and in part because of timing and luck.
A personal anecdote: I have read the translation of a series of letters written by a Polish Jew who was a relation by marriage. These documents are utterly heartbreaking and chilling. They begin in 1936 and continue to 1939, although there is one very brief one written in the early 1940’s. They consist of reports of what’s happening in Poland and requests for help in order to emigrate to America, where my ex-husband’s uncle (the recipient of the letters) was living at the time.
The writer was eventually trapped in Poland and murdered in the Holocaust. He was an ordinary man in the sense of having no particular wealth—as I recall, he had a small textile business—and he even had a brother in the US willing to help and pull every string he could find, including promising the US government that he would take financial responsibility for him. All to no avail.
The following excerpts will give you a flavor of the sentiments and thoughts expressed in these missives. Here’s a quote from the earliest letter that survived (from 1936):
Our situation here grows worse from day to day. A Jew here is worse off than a dog that runs about the streets…The burden of taxes is unbearable. Not a week goes by that there isn’t something new. And it is always on the Jew. It is truly indescribable. You Jew, you have money for everything. And on the other hand, the Jew is persecuted as a Communist. The whole story of the Middle Ages is being repeated.
…Polish Jewry is in a desperate state. Above all, there are no prospects in life for the young people. Very few marriages are taking place among Polish Jews, and so on. The young people see no future for themselves here. They want to emigrate, but unfortunately the world is completed closed to them…Above all, we are very frightened…These days, the people in high places speak openly about how they need to rid Poland of at least 100,000 Jews. Anti-Semitism is growing by leaps and bounds. They send free anti-Semitic newspapers into every village. The Jew is blamed for everything.
Here is one from 1939:
Now, my dear brother, let’s get down to business. You write that you spoke to a “lawyer” [in English] and he told you that he would find out everything that needs to be done. My dear brother, you should know that I dwell on this day and night; I simply don’t sleep.
Most importantly, you must understand what I write you. First, the American consulate here is very strict about the papers it receives. First, the papers must indicate that the person submitting them is in a good financial situation – mainly that his income exceeds his expenses, that he can support [the immigrants.]. If so, they grant a visa. I don’t know if you can show this. If your “boss” [in English] can provide certification that you are paid, for example, $70, and that you require only $40, and you can also show that you have a couple of thousand in the bank, that is good. My dear, I would very much like to rescue the children from this fire. I believe that there is sure to be a war in Europe, and you are well aware what the word “war” represents.
They do everything they can to get rid of the Jews. A young person, if only he has the wherewithal, wants to escape, as if from hell. Oh, my dear brother, we must do everything with great care and deliberation, to see that things go well, because in the American consulate in Warsaw they look to see who has better papers, and better guarantees, and those people get a visa sooner. That’s the thing you have to see to. There are people whose papers have been lying in the consulate for three years already, and still nothing has happened. And whoever has papers that show that someone can put up a lot of money as a guarantee, and also makes a good living, then it’s OK. May God help us get this done successfully.
Here is one from later in 1939:
If I had something happy to write, I would write to you twice a week. Unfortunately, such terrible things happen occasionally, they are indescribable. What times we are living in! People were mistaken in their belief that the aristocracy will win, and that courtesy and decency will rule. Instead, we have barbarism, ferocious violence, concentration camps and women buried alive with babies in their arms. This continues, and England still supports it and gives [untranslatable word] and so on.
…And it’s now clear that war is inevitable. Hitler has arms and people; he needs bread. All of world Jewry must be ready to fight all on fronts with strength and money and influence, to make sure that he fails. For he has decreed that Jews are bad and must be stamped out and their possessions taken.
Now, my dear brother, I know you are eager to know what has happened with the papers you sent. It is not a simple matter. Everyone loves the Jews but nobody wants them [as immigrants in their country]. The American consulate is inundated with [illegible word] and it goes with great difficulty.
From two letters late in 1939:
This week I got your letter with the [illegible word] that you wrote to the “senator” [word is in English]. I see that you are devoted and want to rescue my children from this powder keg. Today it said in the paper that America will be closed for 5 years…
America pities and sends wishes to the Jews. Can’t they let in a couple of million Polish, German, Rumanian and Austrian Jews?
It’s like the rich man who was very charitable. A poor man came begging at his door in winter. It was exceptionally cold. The rich man stood at the door and gave him alms. Shouts the poor man, I don’t want alms. It’s cold and I’m freezing. Let me in so I can warm myself a bit. No answer. The rich man gives him a couple more pennies, but doesn’t let him in.
There was a time when the Spanish and German Jews were chased out and Poland took them in. And now in such developed countries as America and England – they know how to give alms but they won’t allow you to come in and warm yourself.
I’ll stop there, but I’ll add that these represent only a few short excerpts from a much lengthier series of letters that show a man who knows that he and his children are almost certainly trapped and doomed, and yet is fighting with all his might to escape. It is inexpressibly sad to read these letters and know what happened.
How typical this man’s sentiments and knowledge were at the time I do not know. But to me they suggest that a substantial number of the Jews who stayed in Europe in the 1930s and died there in the 1940s were quite aware of the fate that awaited them, either in general or very specific terms, and had tried their best to escape. But for most of them there was no way to do it and nowhere to go.
One thing worth noting is that the figures for 1933 are probably lower than they would have been earlier. By WWI there were already really ominous signs if one knew how to read them, with the “Jewish Census” of the Prussian War Ministry in 1916, in what strikes me as the German mirror of the Dreyfuss Affair in its pointlessness, self-defeating nature, and stupidity.
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/judenzahlung_jewish_census
It’s worth noting that a great many German and Austrian Jews had loyally served the Reich and its Allies through the war, with some like I’d argue Haber outright selling their souls for it due to their involvement in war crimes like the chemical warfare system and slave labor. So to be hit with this blood libel was quite demoralizing and while emigration was unsurprisingly limited during the war, a fair few did leave and others prepared to. And those would have a knock on effect.
In general you saw a cooling off period as the war ended and the initial devastation caused by the war and Imperial and early Republican “finance policy” or lack thereof caused the short, sharp depression of 1919-1923, but that was somewhat offset by the collapse of the Imperial Dictatorship removing the most openly anti-Jewish figures from power (though most of them simply migrated to the political underground or the “Deep State” of the German Army and Bureaucracy). So a lot of people felt confident enough to shelve their plans or even to come back.
But then after the golden years of the republic the Depression in 1929 left many looking for shelter from the economic traumas and later rising totalitarianism in the coming years. And while we can have good arguments about it by 1932 I’d argue the republic was dead in all but name and there was just wrangling over who would inherit the wind, culminating of course in Hitler. So you already saw plenty of people scram in the quarter century between WWI and 1933, which is often overlooked.
The issue is that many did not know how far to flee, and even if they did where to was an issue. Especially against the backdrop of the Depression seeing protectionism and anti-immigration moves to avoid depressing wages further.
These stories are horrifying, and I cannot understand modern thinking which denies the validity of a tiny nation where Jews can live without discrimination for being Jewish. Old hatreds apparently are only suppressed for limited times.
I’ve never understood why some people question this, or raise this question about the Jewish people living in Germany and other impacted countries during the Nazi’s reign of terror.
“Gradually then suddenly.”
80% or more of humans live in a political environment or geologic situation that can turn deadly very quickly. And some will die in political unrest or natural disaster. The impending doom may seem obvious to people looking back, 100 years later, but it is not readily obvious to the current populous.
Would you be shocked to open your newspaper and learn a race war broke out yesterday in Chicago and gangs burned, looted and killed thousands in the affluent suburbs?
Would you be shocked to learn the long overdue New Madrid fault let loose a tremor that killed tens of thousands in Memphis and St. Louis?
Would you be shocked to learn a tsunami killed thousands on the eastern coast?
Would you be shocked to learn anti-fi went on a spree in Portland or Seattle, killing thousands?
You will also not be shocked if none of these things ever happen in your lifetime. We all live among risk and each individually weigh the benefits of our personal, status quo with the potential risks around us. If the Nazis had been quelled early on we would not even know this is a question to ask.
Were Ukrainians insane to not flee their country when the Russians invaded Crimea in 2014?
I do not suppose that this would be mentioned in a possibly opened mail, but was there any thought of doing something extra legal? For example, making their way to some seaside town and paying a fisherman to get them to a safer country such as the UK? How about even more illegal and arming themselves?
I look at my situation, living in California, where there is nothing to keep me from moving out so far. Perhaps I am grasping at straws, but there seems to be some semblance of a functional democracy here. In recent elections, which are blowout for the Democrats as usual, the ballot initiatives had a decidedly conservative outcome. An initiative to eliminate proposition 13 protections for business property failed. Another one to repeal the so-called California civil rights initiative also failed. That one is it routinely ignored but the voters did make a statement.
I look at the recent stolen election in Arizona, and it is clear that the leftist plague can spread to other states. So far, I will stand and fight here.
Bob Wilson;
People certainly left illegally. But they were often caught and made to return. They often paid for false papers, which could help, but they needed money and connections for that. I am virtually certain the man who wrote those letters tried everything he could.
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-American-Secret-War-Varian/dp/031220356X
Fry worked in Vichy France to get Jewish intellectuals out of Europe. Fascinating book by Marino. Seems his worst obstacle was the US State Department.
Jimmy Carter sent Warren Christopher to offer a formal apology to Israel for the US’ actions of that time, which is pretty solid corroboration that it did happen.
I’ve talked to some people and asked if they noted the vaguely Jewish flavor of “Dirty Dancing”. Yes, they say. But never heard of the Borscht Belt or The Gentlemen’s Agreement. This wasn’t the KKK level of anti-Semitism.
I wonder if were easier for non-Jewish Germans to emigrate. California is contemplating a kind of departure tax and they’re not smart enough to figure that out on their own. Maybe Germany was an example.
I don’t want to try to imagine what life was like for Jews in Germany at that time, as if every public official down to the dog catcher was ten times worse than the stereotypical building inspector. Obstacles and insults everywhere and any time you think you had a plan to emigrate…something came up to stop it.
Ominous and no answers.
I knew a German Jewish lady who stayed. When things started to get very bad she decamped to France, where she went into hiding and served in the maquis (resistance). I met with her to ascertain the viability of writing a book about her experiences. The viability was there but as I had recently written a book about a Polish lady who survived the Holocaust, I decided against it — I didn’t want to immerse myself in that subject again. (Instead I wrote a book about the 2nd Marine Division in World War II). Curiously, the German Jewish lady waxed eloquent and nostalgic about life as a German Jew in Berlin before the really bad stuff got underway. Life was rich and happy and Berlin, she told me, was the most exciting city in the world. She avowed that she missed THAT Berlin, the Berlin of her young coming-of-age girlhood.
A certain degree of “sunk-cost” thinking is also at play: uprooting one’s life, career and family and moving to a strange place, where one loses all one’s historical connections and resources, is usually so difficult and expensive that only absolute certainty of imminent disaster will usually justify it. There’s a rather telling passage about this in, of all places, the novel Watership Down, where a rabbit who escapes the destruction of the warren the main characters fled talks about how the Threarah (the warren’s chieftain) explains his decision not to listen to the prophetic warning of one of the fugitives:
Of course, the point of the book is that sometimes the imminent disaster is of such magnitude that even hardheaded common sense is no answer for it, but it is very easy to make this mistake.
I believe Wm. Rubenstein calculated that 72% of the Jewish population of Germany emigrated between January 1933 and September 1939. At that rate, the entire population would have departed by 1942.
Heart wrenching.
it was a continent wide calamity, most directly in the eastern front, across the blood lands, into the caucasus,
the sad circumstance of the ss st louis which happened before the devouring* occurred, where the us administration denied entry under breckenridge long, but even blocked landing in cuba,
FDR was basically anti-semitic. While on the Harvard board, he argued with success that Harvard was admitting too many Jews, and had a quota limiting Jewish admissions established. Per Wiki, FDR “could have saved 190,000 Jewish lives by telling his State Department to fill immigration quotas to the legal limit, but his administration discouraged and disqualified Jewish refugees based on its prohibitive requirements that left less than 25% of the quotas filled.” That was HIS administration. Blood on his hands!
But his anti-semitism pales before his pro-USSR stances. He as C-in-C allowed the USSR to totally destroy Berlin for weeks, though the war was won and lost. That was to punish the Germans for the deaths caused by Hitler’s invasion. He was a socialist tending towards communism in my judgment. He was a Democrat! Let’s pack the Supreme Court was his idea, now resurrected.
Cicero
Could have saved from horrid treatment, certainly. But–somebody has to pick a date–it’s said the Holocaust started at Kristalnacht in May of 38. The war started in October of 39. But nobody foresaw the death camps until the Wannsee Conference in January of 42.
How was FDR going to stop the Russians from blasting Berlin? The city surrendered on May 2 with fighting elsewhere until May 8.
I understand many people hated FDR for any number of reasons but it’s useful to look at any practical obstacles instead of insisting everything was his fault.
You could look at it another way; he spent immense sums and lives–supply convoys–keeping Russia in the war so their guys would get killed instead of ours.
Richard,
FDR should have curtailed Lend Lease to the Soviets once the Western Allies landed in Normandy.
The question should not be why didn’t Jews leave sooner, but rather why were Jews there in the first place.
Given that Germany for the millennia before the Shoah committed genocide over and over upon the Jewish community , nobody should have expected anything different.
Cicero:
Unfortunately Germany did not surrender until Berlin was flattened, Hitler was dead, and Doenetz finally …. gave up, unconditionally. FDR could have, should have,…. but nobody forced Hitler to attack Stalin and the Soviets, nor declare war on the USA.
avi
That would have meant more casualties among the western allies and a later end to the war, which would mean more time for the death camps to operate, and for people to die all over the world, “of” the war.
Keep in mind that Germany’s enemies were mad. Germany had turned some damned foolishness in the Balkans into the unspeakably horrible WW I. Could have stayed home.
Letting them run their own affairs…as with Versailles…gave us another devastating war. So surrender was to be unconditional and occupation was to be total.
The reference is to a film for occupation duty troops.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=your+job+in+germany+1945+film&t=chromentp&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D7OUR5uvs9aw
Or go to youtube and search for “Your job in germany” picking the one running just over twelve minutes.
But we’re talking about Europe here. Our part of WW I cost us 115,000 dead of all cause. That would be, in today’s population, the equivalent of about 450,000 dead guys in a year and a half.
Hadn’t barely gotten the smoke cleared when the fighting in the Baltics started. Poland and Russia gave a war, 1919-20.
The Spanish Civil War confuses a lot of people; who was doing what to whom and when would they know they’d won, whatever it was?
Italy attacked their erstwhile allies, losing 500,000 in an unsuccessful fight for terrain suitable for travel posters and ski resorts.
Mussolini took over Italy.
Not sure the US had any more appetite for trying to straighten out those morons.
Dachau opened in 1933. Picture a French or British politician in, say, 1935 thinking about going up to Mrs. Jones who lost both brothers in WW I, whose cousin is in the upstairs bedroom too torn up to manage his own hygiene, whose husband is dying of some lung thing he got from working double shifts in the ammo plant if she could spare a couple of sons to look into German correctional facilities and policy.
And if they won’t, how do we do it?
I blame the striped-pants crowd, the upper crust WASP bunch for their anti-Semitism. Without that disease, more Jews may have been let in. They were the ones with influence, not the stereotyped KKK guys and factory workers.
There is a story that Hitler, visiting an agricultural research facility, confided in the director that he was not as anti-Jew as it looked. But he had to keep up with the people.
Could have been manipulation. “Oh, the Fuhrer confided in me, as man to man, of his burdens. I am so impressed and important.”
Or it might have been true.
See Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”. But not before bed.
There’s about a minute and a half on youtube of “A Train Near Magdeburg”. The backstory–we have a train to schlep Jews around Europe, although by implication short of trains to move ammo or new tanks, and, at the end, ordered to drive into a river to kill the Jews, will give you a sense of the priorities. No artillery ammo for the corps commander. New tanks stay at the factory until the next Allied bombing raid turns them into scrap. Field hospital can’t evacuate a hundred patients to the rear. But we will find a functioning death camp and if not…drive that bad boy into a river. The story is of the moment of liberation. But it wouldn’t have been necessary except for the priorities. Kill Jews first.
Soon it will be European refugees from Islamic Europe. Will the USA recognise the hidden enemy itself before it is too late?
@Cicero
Very true and this needs to be constantly remembered.
Also agreed.
Uh what?
How did he “allow” the USSR to do if? The people ultimately responsible for the ravaging of Berlin were the Nazi German leadership at all levels. They could have ended it or at least got it closer to ending by surrendering, and as justifiably horrible as the Soviets and their puppets like the Communist Poles were they were they were much more gracious as victors than the Nazis had been.
But it took until Hitler and Goebbels were dead for there to be anybody willing to do that.
I will blame FDR for a lot, but the idea he forced the Nazis to continue fighting to the bitter end in places like Berlin and Prague and Croatia is nonsense.
… or you know, to quell the violent armed resistance, like in most urban warfare.
Agreed, and we should condemn him for that. But I will not blame him for actions that lie with Hitler and Goebbels.
@avi
Largely agreed. Curtailed but not cut off, and used as a means to extract concessions. Especially in mind of the USSR’s willingness to betray agreements, especially on debt.
By that logic the question is why there are Jews anywhere. Especially in Europe and the Med Basin.
Thomas Sowell addressed this topic fairly well. While Germany had had bad times for Jews, it was honestly one of the better places to be a Jew for centuries, along with Poland. Sure pogroms happened and so did official abuse, but not drastically worse than pretty much anywhere else in Eurasia. Moreover the divided, decentralized nature of Germany for most of its history meant that if one jurisdiction expelled or pogromed you, you could leap over one of the many internal boundaries and take up with some Count or Elector or person who was more merciful or at least pragmatic. You could play off leaders and jurisdictions against each other in a way you couldn’t with more centralized realms like England or France. The great Crusades era Rhineland Pogroms happened but were also
uniformly condemned by just about every political leader up to and including the Pope, for instance.
And even after German unification, the Prussian led Empire – though by no means quite the land of milk and honey – was liveable enough and many Jews served loyally in it (and I’d argue a few like Fritz Haber outright sold their soul committing war crimes on its behalf).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qow6D0u5Z30
@Richard Aubrey
Well said on the whole and absolutely agreed.
Though re:
I have absolutely heard of that story. And I will certainly say that it was manipulation on some level. The question is on what and the degree to which it was accurate.
But Hitler was extreme even among European Jew Haters, of whom there was no shortage. I’ve been absolutely scathing in my condemnation of German political and military culture and their leadership during the 19th and early 20th century, including in WWI, but there was really no parallel to the Final Solution for the Jewish Question. And I say this even when talking about people who were very, VERY similar to who Hitler would eventually become like Erich Ludendorff. Even the justifiably awful 1916 Prussian War Ministry “Jewish Census” was fraud on a grand scale and Jew hating narrative work, not plans for extermination.
Likewise, Kristallnacht was centrally managed and apparently somewhat unpopular with the German street. Ditto his decision to support the Husseini clan in their genocidal rampages in the Palestinian Mandate in the 1930s (a fact that is “conveniently” scrubbed from places like the Wikipedia article on the conflict even though other articles acknowledge kt).
So I don’t believe for a second he was just “keeping up” with the German people. He went further than even other genocidal, totalitarian Neo-Heathen social darwinists like Ludendorff were prepared to do.
But I have concluded that Hitler’s real views on race were significantly more complicated and less “scientific” or “essentialist”
Then he outwardly sold. That his racial beliefs were closer to those of Mussolini in that it was at least partially spiritual, but that he resulted to racial essentialism to keep it simple and digestible. Things like Aryanization Certificates and the Nuremburg Questions (necessary to work out the gibberish that was the Nuremburg Laws) I think support that.
But he absolutely believed in the great Jewish menace and conditioned his world view around it, as your mention of the train shows.
Neo: “And many who waited it out did so because they could not leave—either because they were old and ill, and/or poor, and/or because all avenues of escape were closed to them.”
I think we were reminded of those NOT being able to leave when we saw the recent exodus of refugees fleeing Ukraine when Russia invaded.
It was rather striking to see people flee who looked like they were the middle class packed for a vacation, carrying their nice luggage, pets carried in their arms or in small pet carriers, babies in the strollers, kids carrying their favorite toy, etc. Yes, it was heartbreaking.
But, then I started to see videos of those who stayed behind. Those who were not at the Polish border for the foreign news media to readily film; the ones who stayed behind and now the media is getting into the war ravaged cities to film them. They were overwhelmingly elderly, poor, maybe someone younger stayed behind to care for an older relative who was too frail to travel. These were the real heartbreaking videos.
One video was Ukrainian soldiers going house to house in a village trying to convince these people to leave. Almost everyone one of them had the same concern – “where do I go? How can I pay to go stay somewhere else? How will I buy food?” In this one video they showed how one guy was finally convinced to leave with the soldiers and they had to move him out by having him sit in a wheelbarrow! Without such support he would not have been able to leave.
Jews in Germany did not have friendly soldiers going door to door to help them leave.
As far as the comment about bribing someone to help them illegally enter into a friendly country? Yea, right!
First, if you do illegally enter a country there was no guarantee that you would be allowed to stay. Neutral Switzerland had a policy of giving political asylum to defecting German soldiers, but, had no such “welcome” to fleeing Jews. You could put your money in their banks; but just don’t stay!
Second, if you give your life savings to someone there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t cheat you. Could you really trust some one to help you? How do you know they will deliver? What if they actually take your money and then turn you over to the Nazis? It wasn’t like you could complain and get a refund and get to try again with a different smuggler!
Just look at the current situation here in the US. How many times do we hear news reports of police/border patrol finding an abandoned truck/rail car locked with illegal immigrants to the US who died in that truck/rail car because something spooked the smugglers so they took off and left those folks to die.
Even those who did get out legally had to spend ALL their money to do so. It could not have been easy to start over in a new country where you might not speak the language, not have the skills to find work, and have no connections to help you. And worse, you might not be all that welcomed anyway.
So, getting out wasn’t all that easy.
WRT Lendlease. It’s hard to give somebody a hit because he didn’t foresee the future if something else were to have been done.
We have some skin in the game; the family runs to Infantry. We’re a Gold Star family. I’ve done notification of next of kin and Survivor Assistance Officer.
Reducing Lendlease would have gotten more Americans killed, possibly my father’s three wounds wouldn’t have been all he suffered.
Not willing to sacrifice more guys like us to put some unknown pressure on a canny guy whose career shows how he managed others’ efforts to manage him.
avi on May 19, 2023 at 9:44 pm said:
Richard,
FDR should have curtailed Lend Lease to the Soviets once the Western Allies landed in Normandy.
There are reasons to think this might have had a positive impact on post-war Europe. I think it has to be balanced against the fact that the material freed up would have still been expended, along with thousands more American, British, and Commonwealth casualties, fighting across France and the Low Countries to conquer Germany with a less effective Russian army pounding the Germans on the East. I recall reading that most, maybe up to 80%, of German casualties occured on the Eastern Front. VDH has noted that in terms of casualties the story of WWII was German soldiers slaughtering Eastern European and Russian civilians (and Japanese soldiers doing the same in China).
The expenditure might have even had an impact on the war against Japan. IIRC part of the reason Ike gambled on 6 June 1944 was the landing craft he had were likely to be shipped to the Pacific if the invasion of France was postponed significantly, and he might not have gotten them back. We would have eventually had our nuclear aces but without forward island bases for B29s we would have had to wait for the B32 or later aircraft to come on-line to deliver them.
If he had been a bit smarter, Stalin might have toned down his demands for a second front a bit, though even the threat of an invasion from England tied down a significant amount of German military effort. I suppose he might have gotten the idea from the Dieppe debacle that the Allies weren’t likely to make another landing effort for long enough that the Russians could overrun most of Europe or that a subsequent effort would be unsuccessful even if larger and better supported. Either way he would have been in the catbird’s seat after the war.
American and British leadership likely took a page from Woodrow Wilson’s WWI plan and realized that they needed to have boots on the ground in Europe in order to influence the post-war settlement, and would have pressed to invade anyway.
20/20 hindsight says we got the balance about right in the long term. We might have beaten the Russians to Berlin in your counter-factual however I think it’s equally likely that we have wound up in about the same places but in 1946 instead of 1945, and with knock-on effects for our efforts in the Pacific theater.
He was a socialist tending towards communism in my judgment.
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Oh, for crying out loud. There was no coherent economic planning during his administration and the closest thing you got to state-owned industry was some hydroelectric authorities. FDR was an improviser who had no well-formulated ideology. He and his brain trust had bad ideas (the formation of cartels in industrial sectors and agriculture, price supports, high minimum wages, restricted grants to state government), ideas that needed work (the industrial relations model enacted in 1935, Social Security, the secondary mortgage maws), satisfactory ideas (deficit spending, public employment schemes), and good ideas (the end of the classical gold standard, Glass-Steagall, stoking the 20% down 30 year mortgage originated by banks). Note, the ratio of federal expenditure to domestic product in 1940 was about 0.065 and the ratio of federal debt to domestic product was 0.52.
avi,
Given that the U.S. for the majority of its history committed atrocities against ethnic groups and segregated ethnic groups, including Jews, even forcing some (Indians and Japanese) into camps, why would Jews be here in the first place?
Aside from being accurate, the above is meant as sarcasm. All those things happened in the U.S. but Jews living here now are betting those days are behind us. And I certainly hope and pray they are. And the Jews living in Germany at the start of the 20th century were hoping and praying those days were relegated to Germany’s past.
The millennial history of any landmass housing humans is 90+% tribalism, ethnic cleansing, dictatorial rule, starvation, purges, pogroms…
Given that the U.S. for the majority of its history committed atrocities against ethnic groups and segregated ethnic groups, including Jews, even forcing some (Indians and Japanese) into camps, why would Jews be here in the first place?
==
Please tell me when the U.S. government (or any state government) committed ‘atrocities’ against Jews.
I understand many people hated FDR for any number of reasons but it’s useful to look at any practical obstacles instead of insisting everything was his fault.
The State Department and Long were certainly anti-Jew. Maybe FDR was, as well.
A good friend of mine was born on September 1, 1939 in Poland. I can’t think of a worse time and place for a Jewish baby to be born. Nonetheless, his parents got him to France where they waited out the war and his brother and sister were born. They made it to the US after the war and he eventually became a neurosurgeon, as did his younger brother. When he was doing his military service as chief neurosurgeon for US military in Europe (He was a Lt Colonel), he decided he wanted to see his birthplace. He went to a US consulate and told them he was a student and had lost his passport. They gave him a new one with no mention of his military status. This was the height of the Cold War (1970) so he was being pretty reckless. He did make it to Poland and to the place where he was born and didn’t get caught. He came to practice in my community and he and his family lived with us for a month or two until they got settled. His parents spent Thanksgiving with us and I got to hear the whole story. His brother joined him in practice about six years later and I got to read the letter from Johns Hopkins where he trained about how they hated to lose him. He is retired by now.
Someone did a study of the geographical location of pogroms in Germany in the 1300s, cross-tabulated with anti-Semitic activity in the 1920s-1940s. They found that there was indeed a predictive relationship, six hundred years later.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/36835.html
FDR wasn’t a dogmatist or an ideologue. There is something to the idea that he “saved capitalism.” At any rate, he didn’t destroy it, but he let those who had more comprehensive plans for social transformation into his administration. In that he wasn’t so different from some later politicians. Historians have seen that FDR’s policies didn’t fit the classical idea of socialism. It’s possible now to see similarities between Roosevelt and today’s Democrats, similarities that aren’t flattering to him. FDR — or Congress, the Cabinet, or the party leaders — kept his more militant subordinates on a tighter leash, though.
We convinced ourselves that a war in Europe was impossible. Europeans a century after Waterloo had convinced themselves that a general war in Europe was impossible. Why is it so surprising that German Jews thought that centuries after the large-scale pogroms and expulsions had ended that Germany would be more hospitable to them? That was certainly true of Germany on the eve of the First World War, but for many the belief persisted through the twenties and longer. Comparisons with Russia and France encouraged the view that Germany was a hospitable home. The US and the UK had advantages, but before Hitler, it wasn’t clear that the advantages would last, or that the benefits of uprooting oneself would outweigh the costs.
In the Kaiser’s Germany, Anne Frank’s father Otto, fought in the Germany army in WWI, and received a field promotion to officer status. In Hitler’s Germany, he and his family were thrown into concentration camps.
There was definitely anti-Semitism in Wilhelmine Germany, but it was probably less than that in France and definitely less than that in Russia and in Eastern Europe. During the Weimar era, there was significant migration from the East into Germany.
On Jews and Germany –
There were a lot of massacres of Jews there in the early part of the millennium and beyond. But then, after a few hundred years and starting at some point in the 1700s, there was a relative golden age for Jews there until Hitler. Note that word “relative,” because Jews were persecuted all over Europe. The Jews of Germany were also among the most assimilated in Europe, prior to Hitler.
Mike K:
Your friend’s family was lucky in that they didn’t run afoul of the Nazi dragnet in France. In occupied and Vichy France, the recent immigrants from other countries were often thrown to the Nazi wolves.
I’d have packed my shit and hauled ass no matter what. In my 20’s I was used to living out of a backpack in the middle of nowhere in multiple continents. I did what I had to and I have no regrets, and I’ll do it again if necessary. I imagine there are a lot of people like that now and there were a lot of people like that then. Many times the biggest hurdles are self made.
ghostsniper:
Your backpacking experience in Europe and other continents cannot compare to wartime Europe. Some people back then did survive in the woods (including partisan fighters), but they were often killed as well, and if they were found and didn’t have the proper identity papers it was curtains.
Plus, of course, as I’ve already written, many of the people we’re talking about were the elderly, the sick, and children, and those who stayed back in order to take care of them.
Very interesting article
https://www.ima.org.il/FilesUploadPublic/IMAJ/0/48/24103.pdf
about the experience of Jewish doctors as Nazism took hold in Germany.
It confirms that the Jewish population of Germany was 0.9%, as neo noted. Of interest, a full 15% of German physicians were Jews, and this rose to 47% of pediatricians, who were particularly useful to the Nazis who were determined to raise a generation of appropriate young people. Best estimate I could find of USA physicians is also 15% Jewish, from a general population that is ~3% Jewish.
According to this article, The German Pediatric Society kicked all the Jews out. Subsequently, laws were passed that stated the Jewish physicians could treat only Jewish patients, and then were forbidden to refer to themselves as physicians or doctors. Later of course they were sent to the camps, where most died.
What were they allowed to use to describe their professional status?
The German word was “Behandler,” which the author of this paper translates as “Provider.”
That got my attention.
Christoper B. I don’t have a counterfactual; I was reacting to one.
A datum sometimes overlooked is that the dreadful concentration camps in Germany were forced labor camps. Death was expected, Dachau had its crematoria. But first work.
Though they looked like the mouth of Hell to the guys who liberated them…Dachau had a survival rate of 80%. Nordhausen, liberated by my father’s division, had a 60% survival rate.
The death camps, off the train and into the gas chambers, were in Poland and kept operating until the Red Army was at their doorstep. Auschwitz had a survival rate of 15%, likely Jews kept to do some of the dirty work and whatever of the last transport unprocessed when the Russians showed up. The slower the Red Army, the more Jews died. That would have been one result of reducing Lend Lease.
The example of the Train Near Magdeburg is of priorities. That train was on its way to death for its Jews, one way or another. It had halted while the crew tried to figure how to drive the thing off a bridge into a river without being on the front end. Hearing Americans, pissed off and with tanks, were approaching, they fled. This was in April of 45. Had you said to one of the Kill Jews office, “Hey, buddy. How about knocking this off for a bit and trying not to lose the war.” they have said you must be insane.
While the concentration camps got started in Thirties, the death camps weren’t even built until after January of 42.
But there is the Iron Law of Military Counterfactuals: Whatever wasn’t done would, had it been done, have succeeded brilliantly. Guaranteed. Couldn’t possibly fail.
At the end of the Thirty Years War, greater Germany (German in language and culture although with many variations) was broken up into over 300 entities. Baronies, bishoprics, imperial free cities, little places which might be townships now and larger places important in history since.
Presumably every one had its little castle, itslittle army and its little baroque ensemble.
As has been noted earlier, they varied one from another in many ways and Jews might have found it practical to move a few dozen miles for a better situation.
With the Revocation of The Edict of Nantes, Protestants lost all protection in France. 400,000 emigrated, to America, England, Holland and….Prussia. They were, to a certain extent, middle class and Sowell’s Minority Middleman. Looking backward, you might not have expected…Prussia. Point might be…guessing about the next ten years in, say, 1932, would have been hazy.
“And the Jews living in Germany at the start of the 20th century were hoping and praying those days were relegated to Germany’s past.”
Yet between 1900 and 1910, pre nazi good Germans exterminated hundreds of thousands Chinese and 100k Herero and 10k Nama. They are very good at that.
“There was definitely anti-Semitism in Wilhelmine Germany, but it was probably less than that in France and definitely less than that in Russia and in Eastern Europe.”
The Jew hatred of all three Reichs was a bottom up issue. When things were good it wasn’t because the Volk had an epiphany, but rather the temporary ruler ie Barbarosa was righteous.
“I think it has to be balanced against the fact that the material freed up would have still been expended, along with thousands more American, British, and Commonwealth casualties, fighting across France and the Low Countries to conquer Germany with a less effective Russian army pounding the Germans on the East.“
For the first six months after overlord, the western allies were fighting lesser German soldiers. Often they were wounded and partially invalid from action on the Eastern Front. Many were foreigners including Koreans. Those who weren’t ardent Nazis often surrendered.
While it’s true that the Russians won the war, Patton could have been a ringer. In fact the German General staff thought that he would end the war in Dec’44 as he was pushing rapidly through France.
Unfortunately because US forces were slowed down and diverted to Paris to give DeGaulle a political victory, and petrol was diverted from Patton to Monty for Gallipoli 2.0 , any advantage was lost. Patton was forced to stop. The germans were able to regroup,Hitler sent ardent Nazis west ( who would fight to the death- those weren’t needed on the East because that was an existential fight) and the western allies were bogged down with many killed in Hurtgen Forest and the Bulge. Far more than had Lend Lease been curtailed.
FDR was a patrician anti-Semite. He had several Jewish friends but you can hate Jews yet have Jewish friends.
It is difficult to identify reality amongst the propaganda producedby the Germans and the Soviets.
The Jews existed in a “stand-offish” ulture but were frequently weii educated and literate. The ruling classes and land owners in Russia and in Germany/Poland/etc used the Jews as managers, tax collectors, and vodka sellers. That did not help the reputation of the Jews.
Pre-WWII Germany was a mess. Hitler is reported to have struck a “deal” with Zionist organizations allowing emigration as long as those Jews left most of their wealth to the state (NSDAP, Nazis). There was the additional benefit, since, as the Jews focused on the Mid-East, that process would cause difficulties in “British” Palestine. Such a deal! Stolen wealth and trouble for his opponents.
The treatment of German Jews was complex. Well integrate Jews (or those with Jewish spouses) in the military or government were often ignored. “Everyone” knew that most of the Bolshevik leadership, the leaders of the German Communist/ Bolshevik party, and many in the Soviet KGB, especially in the Ukraine, were Jews. That is probably the reason that Jews were not welcome in the US. The Germans were quite pleased to eliminate those “not worthy of life” , but the “concentration” and “labor” camps were needed to support the military effort. They generally didn’t care who made the chemicals, fuel and munitions. Those camps were difficult to operate. There was typhus (spread by lice) and antibiotics were not yet commonly available, so the camps had a significant death rate.
It was different in the East. Germany invzded the Slavic areas expecting to have to eliminate much of the population (I seem to recall ~20%) of the population to make room for German “settlers”. The German army had little information a out the “East” and seem to have operated on the assumption that anyone well-dressed and/or well-fed was, of course, a Communist or a collaborator. Jewish culture was effective so they sort of stood out. Since the Germans expected most Bolsheviks/Communists to be Jews, there was no easy way to escape the bind.
The Russians/Soviets, driven by Stalin’s paranoia, were no better than the Germans (Nazis). Millions died in the Russian camps (Gulag). The distinct Jewish compondnt in the early Bolshevik leadership and in rhe Ukrainian KGB (Holodomor) dumps most of the Russian/Soviet savagery into the laps of the “Jews”. That is probably unfair. The Soviets/Russians have struggled with the reluctance of the “stand offish” to join in the Bolshevik ideology. Hence the flow of Jews from Russia to Israel and the US. The count of “6 Million” killed by the Germans is suspect since it is based on un-verified Soviet data. In addition to the Holodomor in the Ukraine (3-12 million starved to death.), the deaths in the Gulag (many millions), Soviet Russia is also credited with murdering thousands of Polish and other prisoners (army officers, teachers, elected officials, priests, etc.) in places like the Katyn Forest prior to WWII. Indeed, members of the Russian Duma have recently suggested that up to 2 million Ukrainians may have to be killed to properly “pacify” that country. Thus the actions of Germany during WWII are still unclear. There are lots of savages out there who consider murder to be an acceptable means to an end.
Prager in “Why The Jews” discusses the question in detail. He goes further than making the case that the minority middleman (Sowell) is going to catch crap no matter the ethnicity.
The Jewish culture, with certain efforts at things we all should value, does better. Things like domestic abuse, slacking off at work, not supporting family. The result of this, plus at least a bit of reluctance to associate with those who do considerably less well, or at least condone it, could be seen as “stand offish”. This includes not marrying outside the faith.
That said, why being “stand offish” should annoy, much less offend is a question. If they don’t want to associate with me, I don’t want to associate with them. So we look at the additional component of envy.
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